The latest dustup between two of the early front-runners for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination came when a Romney aide told Time’s Mark Halperin that the former Alaska governor is “not a serious human being,” and would be in trouble if debate “answers went more than 15 seconds long.”

That prompted the response from a Palin aide that the former Massachusetts governor was having a hard time controlling his people and that comments in violation of Ronald Reagan’s 11th commandment could hurt the GOP cause this fall. This is 2010, after all, not 2012.

Some conservative commentators think this little squabble was blown out of proportion to stir up dissension between regular Republicans and Tea Partiers while building up Palin. Their idea is that Democrats and their media allies are pretending that Palin is the front-runner to subtly put down Romney, a candidate who they feel would be the strongest challenger to Barack Obama.

Romney himself took the high road, tweeting that the aides who disparaged Sarah were “anonymous numbskulls.” That’s good politics and shows his skills may have improved since 2008, when a high-hat image was one of the factors that allowed John McCain to outmaneuver him. Palin, meantime, got a fresh set of headlines by coining the word “refudiate.”

Palin supporters have gotten their shots in, too. Consider the video above entitled “There’s a bore in the woods” released last year by a fan site called Conservatives4Palin, which played on the hunter versus jogger thing.